Project

Data Origins

The data set comes from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). This organisation records every instances of natural disasters since 1900 within the EM-DAT database. This comprehensive open source database complies data from various sources; UN agencies, government agencies, research centers, humanitarian organisations, reinsurance companies and world press agencies. For a full list of sources see the EM-DAT website. I chose to download all the information regarding natural disasters between the year 1922 and 2022 totaling 16388 disasters. After looking at the data it was clear that the historic record before 2000 was too sparse to stand up against the quality of data recording conducted by CRED since its inception in 2000. Rather than looking at changes over a century using the historic record I have decided to focus on non historic entries of natural disasters which have occurred since 2000. Natural disaster between the year 2000 and 2022 totals 9505.

Research Questions

• Has there been a change in prevalence of natural disasters types since the year 2000? Particularly has there been an increase in natural disaster related to climate change i.e. flooding?

• What regions are most efffected by natural disasters?

Variables

To answer my research questions I am interested in where and when different natural disasters occurred. The following variables are of potential interest in asking these questions:

• historic - Was the natural disaster before 2000 (when EM-DAT started recording natural disasters in real time)

• subgroup - The disaster subgroup:

  • Geophysical - a hazard cause by tectonic plate movement i.e., earthquakes
  • Hydrological - a hazard cause by extreme changes in distribution of water such as flooding or drought
  • Meteorlogical - a hazard cause by atmospheric change such as extreme temperature
    
  • Climatological - a hazard cause by sustained periods of hot or cold such as wildfires
  • Bioloigcal - a hazard cause by bacteria viruses etc which effect human health i.e. an epidemic extra terrestrial - A hazard caused by asteroids, meteoroids, and comets as they pass near-earth

• type - The specific type of disaster i.e., Drought or Earthquake

• subtype - More detailed description of the natural disaster i.e., Flash Flood or Lightning

• country - Country where the disaster occurred and had an impact

• region - Region or continent where the disaster occurred

• year - the year the disaster started

• climate_change_effect - whether the natural disaster is a primary effect of climate change, secondary effect of climate change or unrelated to climate change. Categorized based on EU report.

for further explanation of each variable see the codebook provided by the EM-DATA database

Has there been a change in prevalence of natural disasters types since the year 2000? Particularly has there been an increase in natural disaster related to climate change e.g. flooding?

What regions have experienced the most natural disasters since the year 2000? Has this changed over time?